UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
No Duels, No Beer
By J. A. THOMPSON (Brasenose College, Oxford) FOR my first week at a German university I lived in a hostel for international students. I wasn't quite sure how one became international overnight, but I seized a week-old copy of Le Malin as soon as I could, whispered " Good Evening " in Italian to a delegate with smooth black hair who replied in Dutch (he was Dutch), and felt I was doing all right. Here we had to be democratic ; the " house-leader," a young German lawyer with merry Wehrmacht memories, was most particular on this point. And he expected those foreigners who had enjoyed a democratic upbringing to set a rigorous and helpful example. There were fearful penalties for any of our little family who displayed anti- social, undemocratic tendencies by minding His own business or showing a preference for his own company. It was a bit trying at times, but since that was what they thought their own contingent needed I did my best (like everybody else), and smiled my most cheerful Western-democracies-must-get-together smile whenever I was wakened at three in the morning by intense bespectacled faces whose own slumber was being tormented by unanswered queries about the British legislature.
Nevertheless the German students I found most charming and friendly, and with an inexhaustible capacity for seeking and storing information. " Anybody ever read any Graham Greene ? " I asked one day at breakfast. I was 4reated to four brilliant analyses of four aspects of Mr. Greene's literary significance by four young men, none of whom was taking English as a main subject. They waited politely for me to correct their remarks and bring their ideas on the subject up to date. There was an awkward silence. One tried to help me out: "You must be dumbfounded by the childishness of our approach," he said. One of his companions, who was more acute, quickly raised the problem as to why The Third Man hadn't been called The Fourth Man, which was clearly more in my line. He caught up with me at the door as we were leaving the room ; he wanted to recommend me a book. It was called An Introduction to Graham Greene's Psychological Presentation of the Cosmic Reality, and it had been written by a Munich professor whose name I have forgotten. But they were like that, and it made you think. And it would have been just the same if I had asked them about Matthew Arnold or Gillie Potter.
At the end of my first week, in which I had written four article:, for the hOuse-newspaper, revised an English guide-book on the university, attended several pungent but interminable debates and made upwards of seven impromptu speeches on subjects as various as " Hitch-Hiking " and " Why Mr. Attlee isn't a Communist," I felt on the point of a nervous collapse. I decided for the sake of my health that the sooner 1 stopped being an international student the better.
I arranged accommodation with a German family, and for a day or two revelled in the joy of a room to myself and no political catechising. My meals I took at an ancient inn with sloping floors, where I could get a filling if modest meal for one and tenpence, and spent many rewarding hours chatting with road-menders who came in for a pot of ale, and poor women who had brought their own bread, and sausage and were allowed a place to eat them. They were all quiet and patient and rather old.
Meanwhile there were lectures to attend. One eminent professor was speaking on Goethe, Mondays at eleven. I went along. When he came in, you knocked. on your desk with your knuckles to indicate your support or at least your intention of giving him a fair hearing ; and again when he left, in lieu of applause. I was told that disfavour was registered by shuffling the feet on the floor ; but whether the present generation suspected the inadequacy of its boot-leather or was merely hopelessly tolerant, there were at any rate no mass-shufflings at lectures while I was there.
The other rack on which the German students hung their hopes for a good degree was the " Seminar." The " Seminars " like the lectures, were arranged on a variety of subjects, and you gathered together for them in purposeful groups of twenty-five or thirty. After suggestions had been made for reading, and the subject outlined in the preliminary sessions, the great day arrived when four or five members of the class would be detailed to prepare a written paper for future reading, discussion and, when necessary, pillorying. Something of an ordeal, I should have thought. Antici- pating the kind of treatment which such an occasion would have received in England I arrived that morning at a particular " Seminar " expecting to find only the women students present, my satisfaction at being able to look forward to an amusing hour heightened by the fact that as a foreign visitor I could scarcely be put on the black-list. Not only was everyone present a good five minutes early, but there was actually some animosity when the professor called out my name among those selected to submit a contribution. He clearly imagined that he was doing me a favour, while my colleagues felt that my accepting the nomination savoured of taking bread from the mouths of the poor. One chap actually approached me to see if I might be open to selling or bartering my birthright. But by this time, of course, it was a matter of honour, and I began to look around for a large dictionary and a library.
For my leisure moments there were excellent musical possibilities. The university choir were rehearsing for the Bach Festival in July, and they welcomed my eagerness to join them. One week-end we all rode away on bicycles to a little village by a river for intense rehearsals. The leader of the basses had a puncture and came late ; we shuffled hilariously as he took his seat at the back of our half- circle round the chestnut tree. And on the Sunday we sang Der Geist hilft unsere Schwacheit auf at the evening service in an atmosphere of wonder and devotion, and afterwards pedalled thirty miles home through a thunderstorm. It was worth it.
Apart from the music, there seemed to be little corporate relaxa- tion. Students lived privately and separately, and no effort was made to establish organised or competitive sport. A university soccer-team did appear on one occasion as a matter of fact, but it was beaten 12-0 by a troop of visiting policemen and retired smartly into the oblivion which had nourished it. Fencing was not practised widely and duelling was out. No scars, therefore ; which was a bit of a relief. Indeed, the German students had no time for anything but work.
I was surprised at the formal relations existing between students. At Oxford, you call a man by his first name ten seconds after meeting him ; that is if you feel like making something of him. Otherwise, you don't listen when you're introduced, address him with vague gestures and begin again from scratch next time he turns up. In Germany, even students who had met over a matter of months were still Herr this and Herr that to one another. And the handshaking was prodigious. On arrival at any function, you found your path at once blocked by a phalanx of outstretched hands. These, all of them, you pressed in turn, bowing low and bawling out your name (if you could remember it) above the din of everyone else doing the same. I always came early to choir- practices ; the last man in had about forty-nine hands to shake.
And as far as the beer-drinking went, and the dancing on the tables and the horseplay with the coloured caps, well, there wasn't any money for that. Everyone in Germany is desperately poor, and the students more than most. Those who are lucky get jobs in the vacation to pay for their university attendance in term-time. There is a high seriousness in their lives which will stand the future Germany in good stead. Few temperaments are preoccupied with the trivial and irresponsible.
On my last evening, I went back to my international hostel to say good-bye to the democrats. About nine of them escorted me to the station. An American came with a ukulele. We sang loudly in the booking-hall, and they treated me to " Rule Britannia " when I climbed into my compartment, although they didn't know the words. Which was just as well perhaps. And as my train pulled out, I remembered, and was rather happy, that I'd left my hat on one of the station lamps. I hoped someone would find it, appropriate it and fling it in the air with abandon at a suitable festival. The abandon would do him good, and having only one hat himself, he might be glad of the opportunity.
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